This Nightline interview transcript (Diane Sawyer with Ben Affleck) centers on Affleck discussing his struggles with alcohol, multiple stints in rehab, and the role of sobriety in improving his life. It ties his challenges to a family history of addiction (father, aunt, grandmother), notes his career arc (Good Will Hunting, directing The Town and Argo, new film The Way Back), and describes his current routines, use of antidepressants since age 26, and hopes for sobriety, parenting, and filmmaking over the next five years.
Questions this video answers
47 years old.
27 years old.
In 2001.
Since he was 26 years old.
Two times.
Chapters
Ben Affleck strides into Xavier High School in New York with his signature high octane energy. He is fast talking funny. You're sure?
It is.
As we head to the gym where the junior varsity basketball team is preparing for a playoff game.
I believe in you. You're gonna do it. I got a very good feeling about. Very good feeling about this game.
Affleck has a new movie coming out called the Way Back. It's about a group of young basketball players who need to believe in themselves and a struggling coach who needs faith too, that he could overcome addiction and reclaim his life.
Which one's me? This one?
This is you. Oh, okay. Here we go. Nice to see you again.
Nice to see you again, too. You look great.
I think you were 27 when we did our first interview. You're now 47.
Like I said, you look the same. I'm. It's quite visible. 47. You can see it not getting away with it.
A Hollywood star is ready to talk about the fault lines of addiction in his life.
I've been through. I got sober when I was younger in 2001, which I now look at as a sort of a JV version of what really a problem is. I was sober for a couple of years, and then I thought, you know, I want to just drink like a normal person and I want to have wine at dinner and so on. And I. And, you know, I was able to. I was able to for about eight years.
But he says he learned that sooner or later, your vulnerabilities can find you.
I started to drink more and more and more, and it was really hard for me to accept that that that meant I was an alcoholic. I was like, I can just go back. I was fine before, you know, I just need to take a break. I just need to slow down. I just need to. I'm okay. You know what I mean? This isn't me. And I start to drink every day. And I come home from work and I start to drink, and I just sit there and drink till I pass out on the couch.
Those years spent directly under the glare of the spotlight, the spotlight that first landed on him more than 20 years ago. There he was, a new face lighting up Hollywood. Ben Affleck and his childhood buddy Matt Damon had written a little movie called Good Will Hunting, and it won the Oscar. And the Oscar goes to Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. On stage, they were still just two guys from Boston in disbelief.
Chris Moore, who produced the movie. Thank you so much. The city of Boston, whoever. We forgot. We love You. Thank you so much.
But it didn't take long for Affleck to become a certified star on the COVID of all those magazines, as a superhero in Batman, an action hero in Armageddon, and a Hollywood heartthrob. And in person, so well read, so mischievous. In my first interview, he does an improv of Bill Clinton.
You got a feeling that he might just take you by the hand so well, Diane, you know, we've got the biggest surplus in American history. We created 22 million new jobs. And he just, he does, he feels your pain. Little Town Called Hope, his career as.
A director of films like the Town and Argo brought him a whole new dimension in Hollywood. Ben Affleck, Argo. Thank you.
Thank you all very much.
He kept a kind of balance as he married Jennifer Garner, the beloved actress, and had three children. But as years went by, there was rockiness in his marriage. Two times in the last three years, he went to rehab, always worried that his drinking was affecting the children at the center of his life.
I really don't want my children to pay for my sins or to be afraid for you or to be afraid for me, which is one of the hard parts of being the child of an alcoholic. Do you think, what if my dad gets drunk? What if he does something stupid? What if he ends up on tmz, you know, and it's on my newsfeed and other kids see.
Did you watch the tmz? Did you watch the.
I didn't, I didn't. I saw a little bit. I saw a little bit of it. So, yes, I guess I did watch some of it, although not the whole thing. I, I, I know what it looks like to be drunk. I don't need to watch any more of it.
A relapse broadcast around the world. And in that moment, reliving a family history, a family in which so many lives were devastated by addiction. He was a little boy whose grandmother took her life amid alcohol and barbiturates. His aunt had an addiction. So did his father.
For me, seeing my dad was just, he was drunk every day, and that was just life. And as that got worse, that was really, really painful. And I always said, that'll never be me. I'm never gonna do that. I wish he had been sober during those formative years. But what he's taught me is how important it is for me to be sober now during these formative years for my kids.
He says his mother was his rock. But as his family broke apart, he vowed never to repeat it. What was the hardest Thing for you to be honest with yourself about that.
I was gonna get divorced, that I never thought I was gonna get divorced. I didn't want to get divorced. I didn't want to be a divorced person. I really didn't want to be a split family with my children. And it upset me because it meant I wasn't who I thought I was. And that was so painful and so disappointing.
In yourself?
In myself.
And he says a wake up call about the dad he is determined to be.
I took the last half of the year off and I just got to be dad. Drive him to school, pick him up, go to the swim meet, you know, just that's where the parenting happens. It's in the cracks. It's in the moments where you're just taking them back from soccer and they say something profound or they talk about how they're really feeling about something. And it's like that's where you get to be the parent. That's the joy of it. And that's what I don't want to miss, he says.
With sobriety, he can now understand more about the anxieties and the depression that have haunted him since the age of 26.
I get depressed, I take antidepressants. They're very helpful for me. I've taken them Since I was 26 years old, various different kinds. And I've switched and tried this and tried that. Sometimes they won't tell you about some awful side effect and you'll come back and say, why am I 60 pounds heavier? And they go, oh, well, you put on a little weight, you know, and you're like, oh, oh, well, thanks.
He has a new appreciation of a healthy day. He likes discipline, routine, starting with the gym in the morning, then work. He has just written a new screenplay with Matt Damon.
I'd like to find some sort of sense of meaning and purpose. You know, I was not raised religious. I'm not a very good Christian, although I go to church with my kids because it was important to Jennifer. And now I go too, and I like it quite a bit.
Do you ever say to yourself, maybe I can go back? We can go back and reset time and have that family intact again.
You know, there are things that I would love to go back and change. I have regrets. I, you know, I made plenty of mistakes, some big, some small. I wish I could go back time and change all kinds of things, but I can't.
But what he can do now is join that new breed of Hollywood leading men, showing a different kind of strength for family and sobriety, Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper.
I got sober because of this guy. And every day has been happier ever since. Robert Downey.
Robert Downey.
And you know, guys like I found, you know, like Bradley and you know, Robert have been really helpful to me and really supportive and they're wonderful men.
And with his new movie, sending a message of hope and a reminder if you need help, you are not alone.
1, 2, 3. My favorite scene in this movie, and this is a little bit of a spoiler, is where my character loses his job because it's really about consequences and you understand how desperate he is to not have to suffer those consequences and how painful that can be.
So here we are, two interviews, 20 years apart. On the left, the boy wonder. On the right, the 47 year old man looking at the new path ahead five years from now. You want people to say Ben Affleck.
Is five years from now. Ben Affleck is sober and happy and sees his kids three and a half days a week and has made three or four movies that are interesting to him, probably directed to that he's hopefully proud of and is in a healthy, stable, loving, committed relationship.
See you in five years.
I really set myself up for that one, didn't I? Better make it now. Our thanks to Diane. Hi, everyone. George Stephanopoulos here. Thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel. If you'd like to get more videos, highlights and watch live event coverage, click on the right over here to subscribe to our channel. And don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts. Thanks for watching.
